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In the Company of Bears

What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition

"Kilham's latest is the most thought-provoking book that I've read about bears. It not only made me think differently about black bears, it also enriched how I feel about them."

—Stephen Herrero, biologist and author of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance

Imagine raising an orphaned bear cub, carefully reintroducing her to the wild, then being welcomed back, almost daily, to observe her wild world for more than seventeen years. Imagine visiting her in her feeding spots, watching her with her mates and her young, peering into her den, and, over time, observing the lives of all the other wild bears in her territory and surrounding ones. That is what happened to Ben Kilham, whose long-term study of wild black bears has shattered conventional wisdom about how they live their lives.

In the Company of Bears unveils Kilham’s groundbreaking work. Like others, he once thought that black bears were solitary. But he discovered that they actually have extraordinary communication and interaction with each other—creating and enforcing codes of conduct, forming alliances, and even sharing territory and food when supplies are ample.

In the Company of Bears (originally released in hardcover as Out on a Limb) is more than a story about bears. It’s the story of a scientist once kept from a traditional science career by his dyslexia, only to find that thinking and seeing differently was his greatest gift and his best tool to interpret the non-human world.

About the Author

Benjamin Kilham

Benjamin Kilham has been researching and living with black bears for nearly twenty years. He has become an expert in black bear behavior, as well as in rehabilitating orphaned and injured bears and reintroducing them to the wild. He is invited to lecture all over the United States and internationally. His previous book is Among the Bears, Raising Orphan Cubs in the Wild. Kilham and his work with black bears have been featured in five internationally televised documentaries, including National Geographic and Discovery Channel features, and he has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC ...